


In Blood and Breath

by RedFlagsAndDiamonds



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, American Civil War, Babies, Childbirth, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Graphic Description, Medical Procedures, Midwifery, Past Miscarriage (discussion of), Past Stillbirth (discussion of), Period Typical Attitudes, Poetry, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 12:50:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10438113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedFlagsAndDiamonds/pseuds/RedFlagsAndDiamonds
Summary: All does not go as planned when Emma's child comes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [In Haste](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9804401) by [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on MercuryGray's premise of Emma becoming pregnant with Frank's baby after the tryst in the cellar, and Henry laying himself down as a willing human sacrifice on the altar of feminine honor by offering to marry her.

Franklin had been sent at a gallop for Washington City the moment Miz Emma had stumbled in the parlor that evening, the after-dinner coffee spilling from her overturned tea cup and a long, wet streak of red snaking from underneath her skirt. Only a few moments later, a gush of fluid had stained Miz Jane’s oriental stair runner, and it was only Mr. Henry’s fortuitous anxious hovering at the foot of the staircase as Belinda and the lady of the house struggled to help the poor girl to her room, that spared them from slipping into utter calamity.

Shaking off her growing weariness, Belinda hefted yet another brimming ewer of steaming water from little Elizabeth, who peered shyly over her shoulder for a glance into the candlelit bedroom.

“It gon’ be here soon?”

Belinda lifted an eyebrow, and fixed the girl with the reproachful look that all the household, upstairs and down, had learned to quickly respect.

“Babies don’t often come ‘til they’ve a mind to. Now get back t’the kitchen and tend the kettle – we can’t have it boiling over.”

With a little nod like a hummingbird, Elizabeth darted back down the hall, and Belinda heaved a sigh.

The question hadn’t truly been a silly one, she dwelled silently as, at the room’s center, she carefully tipped the china jug and allowed a wash of simmering water to pour over Miz Emma’s back, her groans deepening. After all, none of Miz Jane’s had taken this long… but they’d each been different, every one single, so perhaps it was too soon to be making assumptions.

The hip tub was coming near to overflowing all over the waxed linen crash that covered the floor around it – no sense in ruining more rugs before the night was out – and poor Miz Emma let out another shaky moan of discomfort, her pretty pale arms tightening around her husband’s shoulders as he whispered in her ear, his thumb rubbing at the nape of her neck.

What a picture they made together in front of the bedroom fire, she in nothing but her chemise and drawers and he in his shirtsleeves, the pair of them soaked to the skin with wetness.

Strange to think it had been eight months already since the marriage at the church on Washington Street, Miz Emma in her mother’s old ivory poplin and a lace-veiled bonnet from the shops, with no time to go to some well-spoken of _modiste_ in Richmond for new wedding clothes. There were no bridesmaids, no flowers, and only the household kitchen’s efforts for a modest collation in the wake of the ceremony. Miz Jane had suffered terribly at the quality of the celebration, her long-held dreams of Parisian silks and towering bridal cakes in the ballroom of the family hotel vanishing in smoke – and her chief concern reduced merely to the wellbeing of her daughter’s judiciously placed shawl, the embroidered edges hanging deceptively over the delicate swell of her belly.

“Walk, I – I have to walk…” Miz Emma whimpered suddenly, dragging the housemaid back from her fading recollections as the girl began struggling to stand without waiting for aid, her limbs wobbling helplessly.

“Emma, please – “

“Easy now, honey…” Belinda crooned, rushing over to help guide her legs over the shallow lip of the tub. “If you wanna walk, you walk – but we gotta be gettin’ you outta them wet things ‘fore you catch cold.”

China blue eyes gazed back at her almost unseeing as she was pulled gradually to her bare feet, confusion at not immediately getting her own way amidst the hours of strain obvious, as if she were a petulant little girl all over again. A little girl, soon to have a little boy or girl of her own.

“Now you just hold tight t’ Mr. Henry, and I’ll fetch ya fresh linen.”

As she hurried over to the highboy and began sorting through the various minute cupboards, Belinda couldn’t help but overhear the murmurs from the husband in question, while the couple began a sedate circuit around the room.

“It’ll be over soon… just think of the child, how you’ll feel when you see his face… It won’t last for much longer…”

Hardly shocking, his talent for soothing – not that it did him much good when his pretty promises weren’t ones he could keep, when only the God he served knew when Franklin would arrive back with the doctor, a rich _accoucheur_ from Washington City that Missus Constance Bishop, a finishing school friend of Miz Jane, evidently swore by.

 _Accoucheur_ , heh! Just some fancy name for some fancy man-midwife, likely. Belinda privately doubted he could do better than her Aunt Tee back on the old farm when she’d hardly been a foot high. The old lady had mixed up potions that brought out horses, cows, and Miz Jane’s brother, not failing once. Not even those grand doctors from Richmond were as good as that, those who’d fought for hours to save Miz Jane’s life that awful winter when Mr. James’ first son came all too soon in a torrent of blood… and the second, a year later, this one tangled hopelessly in the cord, his tiny face all pinched and ashy grey. It would take yet another year before Mr. Jimmy came into the world, red faced and howling, with one little foot twisted the wrong way.

The grandfather clock downstairs chimed five, just as Belinda finished shaking out one of Miz Emma’s simpler chemises. Nine hours then…

“Ooh -!”

Her little cry was the only warning offered when the poor girl crumpled slightly, vomit spewing across the floor before Mr. Henry could catch her in his arms.

With a sigh of relief, Belinda rushed to her side and daubed one of the waiting muslin cloths into the cooling water from the bath, before wiping down Miz Emma’s paling lips.

“Well now, that’s a good sign… means we’re nearing the end.” She warbled gently,

with a smile that, for the first time in nearly six hours, wasn’t entirely forced.

 

*

 

“ _Thou art my heart’s sun in love’s crystalline:_

_Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine:_

_Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine_

_My heart’s day, but the shadow of my heart,_

_Issue of it’s own substance, my heart’s night_

_Thou canst not lighten even with thy light,_

_All powerful in beauty as thou art…”_

It was strange how Henry so often found his purpose reduced to reading or recitation at a bedside, but then, his more common subjects involved Matthew, Luke, Revelation, God’s promise of the World to Come… He had little experience concerning tales of knights errant and mermaids, or, to think on it, poetry in general.

There was no great demand for the Song of Solomon at the deathbed.

 

 _“Half light, half sorrow, let my spirit sleep…”_ he continued quietly, before a weak voice interrupted, concluding the verse.

“… _They never learnt to love who never knew to weep.”_

Emma offered up a wan smile from where she lay sweltering beneath the piles of sheets and bedding that decorum demanded, her skin waxy and glistening where sweat had trickled down her brow and neck with the exerting pains that seemed to strike more and more often – these lucid moments had become rare in the last hour, and Henry feared that quite soon, they would dissipate altogether.

 

“I’d never heard it quite that way.” She whispered, all energy clearly near to exhausted. “My father always read it… brighter…”

 

Henry glanced down at the little blue-bound volume in his hand and swallowed somewhat guiltily.

“I happened to find it on the dressing table, I thought it might give you some comfort.”

She smiled again, a little wider, and caught his hand when his fingers brushed against her throat, loose tendrils of ink black hair pasted to her white skin with perspiration.

“As if you could fail at that.”

For a moment, it seemed as though she were studying their joined hands, the little band of gold on her finger gleaming just as brightly as it had the morning he’d guided it into place.

“I… I feel I ought to be asking for forgiveness… I never did manage to be much of a wife…”

Abruptly, he wanted to laugh and sob all at once. After all, it was he who’d foisted marriage upon her when she found herself carrying a man’s child – and God forgive him, but he never would be able to consider the absent scoundrel, whoever he might be, with anything but rage and contempt – and, he presumed, like so many young brides, as if anxious to prove his apparent self-sacrifice was not for nothing, Emma had thrown herself mercilessly headfirst into acting the role of the perfect wife. He’d never had so many clothes mended, and so quickly, even if the stitching was too wide and more suited to embroidery than seam-work, and her attempts at assisting in the kitchen had only recently begun to resemble something genuinely edible. But she’d been so nervous, chastising herself constantly for being unable to tend to her own husband while they even yet remained under her parents’ roof - for it would take time to save his paltry salary every month out of the pocket of the United States Army into a sum suitable for setting up housekeeping – that he never dared offer anything but a pleased expression and willingly gulped down whatever she set in front of him at her father’s table.

“There’s no need for that – no woman could better devote herself than you have –“

“I don’t mean that…” she broke in gently, her eyes downcast, suddenly shy.

“It’s only… I never… I should have…”

She floundered a moment longer, before his breath froze in understanding.

“I… I considered that I... I had no right to ask that of you…”

Slim fingers brushed the side of his face.

“Henry…” Emma breathed, her face open, eyes shining. “We’re _married…_ ”

“And that hardly makes you my property, to use as I wish.”

Her lips parted; ready to speak again, when suddenly every inch of her body went rigid and she threw her head back, eyelids clenched tight as her knuckles went bloodless around his hand. A strangled cry rattled in her throat, bitten back behind gritted teeth.

Shaking, he held their clasped hands close as he crouched over the bed – the bed that had been used by them for nothing but sleep throughout eight months of matrimony - urgently whispering whatever mollifying sentiments he could call to mind, as if she were only another casualty of battle, riddled by agony she could not fight and win against.

At last, her muscles eased and her breathing grew less labored, though he knew it would be only another few moments before the pain gripped her again, her body trying urgently to expel a child that they had anticipated hours before.

“Promise me… you’ll perform the service, don’t let strangers put me in the ground –“

“I can’t promise something that will not happen!” he replied harshly, cradling the back of her skull, her damp hair hanging about her bare shoulders like a tangled veil.

“Henry – _it’s not going to come_.”

The verbal admittance of the truth neither of them had wished to face, as the hours had pulled them from tiredness to weariness to exhaustion, finally broke his strength. Pulling back the sweat-sodden bedclothes, he cradled her body against him, her face resting on his shoulder and her fingers curling weakly at the collar of his shirt.

“What could you possibly need forgiven, my angel, my darling?” he choked into the flesh of her neck. “If there was ever any guilt, it’s mine to carry, not yours…”

Her only reply was another sob of crippling agony, her neck craning backward just as she struggled to speak.

“It’s – I - I felt something come away -!”

With a pounding heart, he threw aside the remaining covers, exposing the flushed, heavy rotundity of her abdomen, before shaking awake the old nursemaid.

“Please – Mrs. Gibson, something’s happening -!”

The elderly woman was alert in moments, hurrying to the foot of the four poster and easing apart Emma’s trembling thighs.

Her lined face blanched.

“We gots t’get the doctor here, Mr. Henry…” she muttered shakily, clear terror present in every manner of the woman he had never known to so much as flinch.

“If he hasn’t arrived by now, he never will!” he barked back, dread forcing him to abandon every sense of propriety he’d ever known as he carefully pushed aside one of his wife’s knees and glanced to what lay between.

Something closed across his chest, stopping every breath and every beat of his heart.

 

“Fetch her a cloak… quickly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical notes:
> 
> There are conflicting sources on what level of army pay union chaplains were allotted - at the start of the war, they entered equal to the rank of army private, and were given a monthly salary of thirteen dollars. However, in 1864 new regulations were passed by the war department promoting all chaplains to the equivalent in rank of cavalry captains, with commensurate pay, uniforms, insignia, and a saber belt with a sword and pistol (drink up that image.) Therefore, if they were married in September/October of 1862, Emma and Henry would only have to put up with being poor as proverbial church mice for another year, before they would begin receiving $115.50 per month, roughly $1800.30 today.
> 
> The poem read by Henry (and the title) are by Alfred Lord Tennyson.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've tried to make this as accurate as possible - for 1863. Don't try any of this at home.

As the night ticked on into early morning, the claret began to lose it’s sweetness and more than once Jimmy considered pulling out the hip flask that would have made his mother purse her lips.

But Mama was fast asleep on the parlor settee after a thorough weeping and a dose of laudanum, when it had finally become amply clear that they were no longer awaiting a new arrival, but grim-faced news of loss.

In a way that seemed cold even to his own sensibilities, Jimmy couldn’t help but lay a heavy portion of the blame at his sister’s feet – a young southern woman of good name and standing, choosing to whore herself for some two-faced Yankee preacher? The child’s death was punishment enough, some white-hot part of his mind screeched in a rage, while the other half of him – the part that had run through the garden clutching frogs and beetles to satisfying screams of disgust, that had stood shame-faced but satisfied when he took his part of every too-often scolding, that had admired his seventeen year old sister’s radiant face when she glided down the hotel staircase in her new white ball gown to applause and admiration from the best of Virginia society, that half that was a brother - rebelled viciously against the prospect of wishing her harm.

 

Yet he had no such obligation to his brother in law, so called. And as it was Yankee lusts that had brought Emma directly to the reaper’s door, it was only fitting that he claim some form of vengeance against the man who’d murdered her as surely as if he’d stabbed her.

Call it a brother’s duty.

 

The floorboards creaked as his father turned on the heel of his polished shoe, beginning another round of steps past the curtained parlor window – presenting so classic an image that it could have been he with an expectant wife.

 

“You have t’ rest, Papa…” Alice muttered from her seat in the wingchair, and Jimmy started, having assumed that she’d dropped off to sleep as well.

 

“I’ll rest when we hear that your sister is alive.” He replied churlishly, pulling aside the window drapes to glance out into the dark.

“The horse must have been lamed, or thrown a shoe… it’s only several hours from here to Washington –“

 

“There’s plenty of doctors here in town – why are you and Mama so –“

 

“Do you know what those butchers do to women?!” their father barked back at his daughter, wrapping a bloodless hand tightly around the carvings at the back of the settee, their mother beginning to stir with the noise.

 

Alice went white, and Jimmy turned his attention to the wood grain through the floor, every muscle tense and his insides seemingly filled with lead.

 

“Chapmann is said to be the best in his profession, and your mother and I will not risk – “

 

“Mr. Green, sir!” came a short, panicked cry from the hall moments before the door to the parlor burst open and little Elizabeth dashed into the room, breathless and pallid.

 

“Heavens, girl!” Mama chided sleepily, pulling herself from her slouch across the cushions. The folds of her sleeve had become imprinted into her skin, shallow pink lines running across her cheek. “What’s happe-“

 

“Mr. Henry – Miz Emma, ma’am!” the maid stammered, round, terrified eyes flickering to each face in turn. “They leavin,’-!”

 

Without waiting to hear more, Jimmy struggled to his feet, his cane abandoned at the side table, the entire family hot on his heels in a frenzied brew of panic and outrage.

 

“Have you gone insane, Hopkins?!” Father roared in a tone that none had heard escape his lips in living memory, as Emma – wrapped in a heavy paisley wool cape, her hair disheveled – was brought down the stairs, moaning, cradled in her husband’s arms not unlike the unborn child he’d infested her with.

 

“What do you think you’re – !“

 

“I am merely seeing to my wife, Mrs. Green.” The preacher replied with that infuriatingly righteous tone of anger that had prompted vivid imaginings of bruised knuckles and bloodied jaws many times before in Jimmy’s mind.

 

“Seeing to her how?!” their mother cried, lifting her satin skirts nearly to the knee as she fought to match his strides towards the door. “She needs a doctor! She- “

 

“And she will have one!” Hopkins returned fiercely, as Belinda – faithful Belinda, now with tears in her eyes – opened the front door and allowed him to vanish into the balmy early dawn, carrying Emma away from the solidness of familial devotion, and straight into the far less welcoming embrace of uncertainty.

 

 

*

 

There was hardly room in the wards to walk, much less accommodate a laboring woman, and so Mary was forced to situate her pet (as Jed was so found of referring to the rebel nurse) in one of the few empty cots left in the open air of the main foyer, alongside the staircase.

 

She had only witnessed one birth in her life, and that from a distance, holding fresh wrapping lint ready for a midwife to deposit her Aunt’s third child, but with Miss Green – no, Mrs. Hopkins - altering between invocations to God and wordless cries as she writhed on the straw mattress, the Chaplain’s eyes pleading, the few conscious patients present watching from their own beds with a kind of morbid curiosity – and one physician off shift with the other three towns away - she was forced to turn to what little knowledge she did possess.

 

“Sister Isabella – go upstairs to the nurses’ kitchen and prepare a fresh pot of tea with extra maple sugar, then bring it back down while it’s still steaming. Quickly.”

The little novice scurried off to obey, and Mary forced herself to assume the role of nurse, rather than mentor, sister…

“Now…” she murmured kindly, all prepared efficiency while bending Emma’s legs for her as gently as possible. “Let’s see what’s causing all this pain…”

 

The answer was clear within moments.

 

Mary had become well acquainted with dread since her first hour between the walls of Mansion House, but she had yet to encounter such a wave of horror as that which gripped her body in a vice when she pulled aside the sweat-soaked chemise, and saw the tiny, glistening arm, bruise-purple and ever so slightly twitching, as it hung from under the girl’s heaving stomach.

 

Swallowing back the bile that surged up her throat, she wrapped a finger and thumb around the small wrist and gave a cautious tug – nothing.

 

An unfamiliar sort of panic began clouding her head, as she mentally raced through possible options, each as unlikely as the last, until she could think of nothing more than to pull at the arm again, a little more firmly.

Emma screamed as though a bayonet had gored her, and Mary pulled her hands back, shaking.

 

“What in Heaven’s name –?“

 

There was no time for explanations, only enough to watch Anne Hastings’ eyes flash wide before she had fallen to her knees at the foot of the cot, with a billowing of green calico skirts.

“Move.”

Obeying without question, desperate for any assistance, Mary shifted to the side and allowed Anne to grasp one of the child’s fingers – dwarfed between two of Anne’s own – and give it sharp pinch.

Someone gasped, but after a moment the hand flexed, curling into a little fist before easing itself back inside.

For a moment Mary sat breathless, before recovering herself.

“That was remarkable-“

“Please.” Anne replied brusquely. “It may be unborn, but it can still feel.”

 

The Englishwoman moved with a sharp, practiced air of cool efficiency, which rivaled that of Dr. Foster when he was at the height of a curative treatment, and for a moment Mary lost her irritation towards Nurse Hastings in a whirlwind of astonishment.

 

“The child is lying sideways in the womb, instead of head down – it’s likely become trapped between her hips.” Came the grim prognosis, while Anne pressed her ear to Emma’s belly, her hands pressing firmly at various points in the stretched skin. “We will need to turn the child, inside the womb, so that it can be born naturally.”

 

Mary shook her head in confusion, stammering as her mind raced.

 

“But – how –“

 

Anne fixed her with a heavy-lidded, withering glare, as half-forgotten childhood memories of watching her elder male relations assisting livestock to foal and calf bubbled gruesomely to the forefront of Mary’s imagination.

 

“Miss Hastings, you cannot be ser –“

 

“In another hour or less, the child will suffocate and the womb will rupture – I assure you Miss Phinney, I am perfectly in earnest.”

 

“Please… Nurse Mary…” came a sudden, faint croon, and she leaned close, grasping Emma’s trembling hand.

“Just… save my baby, please… there’s no time…”

 

Her eyes fluttering shut, Mary fought back brutal images of torn skin and inhumanity, and instead begged forgiveness of the God she desperately hoped was listening.

Her quiet nod seemed to serve Anne better than any order.

 

“Move her to the edge of the bed – quickly! You there -!”

 

The orderly she barked towards snapped upright immediately, eyes as wide as that of a mouse cornered by a barn cat.

 

“– I need fresh lint, a clean knife, a bowl of warm water, and the softest lye soap you can find.”

The boy dashed off, just as Sister Isabella came scuttling back with a wide clay chicory mug steaming in her hands.

“Your tea, Nurse Mary –“

 

“Ah –“ Anne all but sneered. “Someone, at least, is not completely bereft of knowledge then.”

 

Her admiration instantly somewhat dampened, Mary fought the urge to roll her eyes as she assisted the chaplain in heaving his wife upwards, into a semi-seated droop.

 

“Emma –“ she began, in as strict a tone she could manage while still maintaining a sense of comfort, “Emma, you need to drink as much as you can bear, it’ll give you some strength.”

 

At the first sip, the young woman made a face, likely from the over-sweetness, but the next several seemed to be taken more easily.

 

“As for you, Reverend –“Anne muttered distractedly, easing both of Emma’s snowy legs over her shoulders before she began unbuttoning the cuff of her right sleeve.

 

“Male presence during delivery is… uncommon, but I don’t suppose there’s any point asking you to go put the kettle on to boil…”

 

“Forgive me, Miss Hastings, but shouldn’t we wake Dr. Foster? If there’s any risk to mother or child, than surely a… professional hand would –“

 

Anne cut across Mary’s careful probing with the acidity of a viper.

 

“Miss Phinney, I’ve caught nearly four hundred children in London alone, and watched my mother catch eight hundred more. This poor girl has suffered enough; perhaps we may spare her the humiliation of Dr. Foster poking his nose into places best left to a feminine eye.”

 

A few sharp words of defense leapt into Mary’s mouth, averted only by the return of the orderly.

 

“Here y’are, Nurse.” He panted, dumping the requested supplies onto a flattened patch of Anne’s skirt. She offered only an impotent glare, before turning back to her patient.

“Mrs. Hopk- Emma,” she corrected herself suddenly, to Mary’s surprise.

“Emma, your body is going to begin ordering you to push; I do _not_ want you to listen. Do you understand? You must ignore the pain, and concentrate on what I tell you to do.”

 

Slim fingers tightened around Mary’s hand as Emma nodded, her lips pressed into a thin white line.

 

“Good –“ the English nurse replied curtly, wetting her hand before plunging it entirely into the slimy brown lye soap, the disgusting mass puddled like a rotting jellyfish in it’s deceptively grand glass jar.

 

“ – the process will be painful; I want you simply to hold Miss Phinney’s hand, and not to move an inch.”

 

All breath seemed to still as, with her hand slicked to the mid-forearm, Anne leaned forward and allowed her fingers to vanish between Emma’s thighs.

 

Almost immediately, the girl tensed as if a thread had been laced up the notches of her spine, pulling her sharply upright, and her lips separated in a soundless cry which finally escaped several seconds too late.

 

“Just breathe, Emma – focus on breathing, you’re doing so well –“ Mary found herself urging, the hand not currently being crushed to pulp rubbing steadily at Emma’s back.

 

“I’m sorry… “ she suddenly whimpered, her cheeks pinked with more shame than exertion, Mary realized with a pang. “I shouldn’t cause a fuss –“

 

“If you aren’t permitted to ‘fuss’ now, I can’t think of a time that would be appropriate.” Mary murmured to her, with a confidence that she could almost convince herself of.

A weak smile was her only answer, before Emma threw her head back with a few gasps of pain, the chaplain – Henry, Mary realized, she ought to call him Henry – pressing his lips to her temple.

 

“The head is freed.” Anne panted at last as she withdrew her hands, her own face rosy from effort. “A full version wasn’t possible – we’ll have to attempt a breech delivery.”

 

Something shifted beneath Emma’s skin, like a bedsheet left to ripple in the breeze, and her eyelids clenched tight.

 

“Somethin’s moved, I – I felt it – movin’ down – “

 

Anne nodded, both hands braced on Emma’s thighs.

 

“Excellent – the body’s engaged. Miss Phinney – hold her quite still, we must now exercise the most extreme caution.”

 

Steeling herself, Mary tightened her grip on each slender shoulder, her thumbs stroking soothingly.

 

“The breech is coming – don’t push. Just breathe deeply – “

 

“Pant, dearie – like you’re blowin’ out a stubborn candle.” A familiar brogue cut in, as the matron appeared suddenly at Anne’s left, peeling Emma’s hand out of it’s white-knuckled grip on the scratchy army-issue bedclothes and clasping it in both of her own.

 

Mary could have embraced the Irishwoman for her intervention, as Emma began expelling deeper, heavier breaths, a few trickles of fluid splattering the floor while a pair of minute buttocks and a dimpled spine inched into view.

 

“That’s it, the breech is born –“

With a sound like raw meat tearing from a butcher’s hook, Anne slid her fingers slightly deeper, and a pair of purpled legs dropped down.

 

“We’re halfway there, Emma…” Mary breathed, pressing the girl’s tear-streaked face close to her own cheek. “You and Henry will meet your child soon – just be brave for a little longer –“

 

“There go the shoulders…” Anne grunted. “Sister, be ready with those lint sheets – now, with the next pain, push, and push _hard!“_

 

For several long moments, Emma’s answering cry of strain was held tightly behind her teeth and ground into a primeval snarl, every muscle stretched taut until her strength seemed to snap like a bit of overworked thread, and, shaking with the effort, she screamed out loud.

 

“You pull on my hands dearie, that’s the way – hard as ye want!” the matron shouted over the clamor, Mary chanting a steady stream of encouragements.

 

“Oh God… oh… God…” Henry whispered, sounding caught between awe and horror before, all at once, every word spoken was cut cleanly in two by the wail of a newborn, as a perfectly formed baby eased out the last few inches into Anne Hasting’s palm.

 

“It’s a boy – you have a son!” Mary exclaimed shakily, as Emma collapsed into her husband’s arms with a weary look of relief, her face radiating a sort of hazy delight.

 

“A bit small, but he’ll plump up quickly enough.” Came the curt statement from Anne while she ripped the bit of lace from her head and pulled two long hair pins free, waves of chestnut instantly rippling down her shoulders as both bits of metal were squeezed tightly around the last few inches of the birth cord, and tied in place with a torn strip of lint.

 

The baby continued to squall as he was enveloped in linen and handed off to the matron, who clucked and cooed with a grandmotherly captivation as she rushed over to the nearest washstand.

 

“Ohh, he’s a fine young man, isn’t he – just like his papa…”

 

It took some moments before Mary recalled that she did have to breathe, her head spinning as though she’d consumed a full bottle of whiskey. She had never particularly seen the concept of birth anything but a series of bodily processes, best overseen by a competent physician, resulting best in a healthy child presented to a thriving mother… And yet, despite all the ridiculous flowery talk of divine miracles and effort wrought by love, there was something strangely remarkable in a child’s sudden appearance, a natural reward for the body’s hours of toil…

Jed would smile at that, she realized suddenly, with a faint smirk of her own.

 

“What’s happening? - She’s gone limp-!“

Henry’s frantic exclamation dragged her from her musings as she brushed a hand across Emma’s damp brow.

 

“Exhaustion, most likely – the effort was… considerable –“

 

The sentence was barely past Mary’s lips when a bitter, salty stench began to permeate the air, one all too familiar to every individual present, before a lump of red, wrinkled tissue slid from Emma’s body, followed quickly by a gush of crimson that bathed both of Anne’s hands with gore.

 

“Oh no – oh no, no, _no!_ ”

 

“Miss Hastings-!” Mary implored desperately, as the Englishwoman began wadding strips of lint and packing them into the orifice that was now bleeding as profusely as an open shell wound.

 

“Go to the kitchens and find two black grains of rye – _anyone!_ ”

 

By the time the swollen black pellets had been retrieved and ground into the cold remains of the maple tea, the patient was shivering terribly and her lips had lost their natural pink, fading quickly to an ashy pallor.

“Once the potion is ingested, it should begin to staunch the blood loss…” Anne assured Mary shakily, as she began replacing the already-saturated lint with fresh packing.

 

“Hold her head.”

 

His jaw held tight, in a manner Mary had only witnessed when he came too late to a deathbed, Henry did as instructed while she tilted down Emma’s chin and tipped the contents of the cup past her lips.

Black flecked liquid splattered her pallid skin as she retched and fought for breath, blue eyes fluttering in a strange middle-place between life and unconsciousness, but gazing unquestionably towards her husband.

 

“I l’ve you…”

 

Her eyes closed.

 

Mary held her body quite still, numb disbelief settling throughout her mind while Anne’s head drooped with a trembling sigh of defeat.

 

“I’m so sorry…”

 

 

Had she not known better, Mary would have thought the look on Henry’s face to be one of chilling rage, as he combed his fingers through Emma’s hair.

 

Her father had always told her, when she asked such questions, that God called the good, the beautiful, the kind to His side as soon as He could will it, for they were the best of His flock and belonged among the saints in Heaven.

Perhaps that was true, but as she looked down at Emma’s still face, a few weak breaths still lifting her chest, she couldn’t help but rebel angrily.

The world had come apart at the seams all around them, fear, anger, and hatred driving men to atrocities and cruelty beyond belief… With so much wickedness, was it unfair to ask the almighty if he might let one angel live? That some of the blood pulsing gently through the body of a personified evil might be permitted to spill, and –

With a sudden, quiet gasp, Mary pulled herself upright and began fumbling for one of the ill-stitched blankets slung across the foot of the cot.

 

“Miss Phinney, what -?!”

 

“There’s no time for questions – tuck the ends in around her legs.”

 

For once, praise God, Anne did as she was told, while Mary unfastened her own pinafore and fanned out the stained fabric across Emma’s motionless body.

 

“She needs to be kept warm – Sister, we need tubes, a glass funnel, and needles; and wake Dr. Foster, however much he curses; inform him that a patient requires an immediate Blundell procedure – _quickly!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, I may have pushed the envelope with a transverse lie, a breech presentation, AND a postpartum hemorrhage, but then, the show gave us eclampsia, a brow presentation, AND a meconium aspiration, so I think I'm safe.
> 
> Ergot - a black mold that grows on certain forms of grain - was known to midwives as an abortive or a means of stimulating uterine contractions. In the case of uterine hemorrhage, it essentially forces the muscles to squeeze down on the blood vessel, clamping off the flow of blood. Today, it forms the base ingredient (in much safer doses than what these people were using) in the drug ergometrine.
> 
>  
> 
> Since we know from s.1e.2 that Anne is from East London (which at the time was basically one enormous slum) I thought the possibility of her gaining some medical experience assisting her mother as a midwife wouldn't be entirely out of the realm of likelihood.


	3. Chapter 3

Her mother had always said that a lady ought never to weep before others; if it couldn’t be helped, she should at least remain quiet and not make a spectacle of herself.

But there was no one in the parlor for the moment, her two surviving children having abandoned her for their own expressions of grief in private, and with Belinda upstairs tending to Dr. Chapmann – who had finally arrived a little past seven in the morning, with a twisted ankle and irreparably fractured pride – there had been only James to answer that terrible knock at the front door.

So, quite alone, Jane had pillowed her head on her arms across the back of the settee, and sobbed.

It seemed so little time had passed since she’d watched a small girl who hardly came up to her knee pulling flowers from the garden and crying when a rose thorn drew blood. She’d been curled and crimped and ruffled as grandly as any lady, even at two years old, and Jane – then the overkeen young mother – had scolded Belinda time after time again for the state of the child’s stockings and the cutwork edging her pantalettes; such wild behavior wasn’t befitting of a proper young lady…

But decorum and propriety had been shunted aside with the outbreak of war despite her every best effort, and while polite parlor talk of far away battles and death over needlework and cups of English tea had offered the illusion of normality, Jane would never have dreamed that the same horror, which had made widows and childless mothers of her dearest friends, would ultimately claim her own daughter as a casualty.

The white-painted door to the parlor clicked open, and she sat up quickly, blotting at her reddened eyes with the heel of her hand.

The war had turned her husband into an old man. She would swear before God Almighty that James was no less handsome than when they had first been introduced at the Wainthrops’ Christmas ball, but there was no denying the deeply pitted lines across his brow, and the quickening change of his hair from black to silver.

He sank beside her on the velvet-puckered couch, and appeared to examine the lines of his hands.

“We have a grandson, it seems.”

A sigh rattled out of her throat. A living baby, at least, allowed for hope, however fleeting.

“But do we still have a daughter?” she choked, and the lines of her husband’s jaw tightened, prompting yet more uncontrollable tears. If Mama could see her now…

“The boy gave word that… both, are thriving.”

Her eyes fluttered shut, each breath coming more heavily than the last while her heart fought to calm itself from the reckless gallop of seconds before.

“I…” she wavered, with a feeble attempt at sniffing back the crying. “I thought, for a moment last night, that… that I could smell it. The carbolic acid, you remember?”

He didn’t speak, but one of his roughened hands caught her satin-soft fingers, and petted at them with his thumb.

“I never told you, but… I saw them. Both of them.”

James turned her head slowly with three fingers to her cheek, and the look in his eyes would have set her to sobbing again, had she not seemed to have exhausted herself.

“I begged you not to look…”

“I had to… They were my children, James.”

That solitary fact had been both a consolation and an agony, when one had been carried out wrapped in sheets, and the other in a basin filled to the brim with blood.

“I thought – perhaps, somehow, I might spare her… all I could think about were his little feet and arms, all covered in red… but I nearly let her die, didn’t I? My own daughter, my grandchild, and I’d have killed –“

“We did what we thought best.” Her husband interrupted firmly. “All’s well, there’s no blame to be had – not by us, at least.” He paused, eyes downcast, while drawing her close until their brows touched.

“I’d not have allowed her to suffer as you suffered – I swear by God almighty.”

Jane’s chin trembled viciously, until her resolve against a show of feeling cracked and she flung herself against her husband’s chest; great, heaving sobs rattled her body for eight solid minutes as he held her tightly, her fists pounding his shoulders with a kind of enraged, powerless grief he had only known her to display once before, one winter night all those years ago…

 

 

*

 

 

She wasn’t in her bed at home – the mattress was too lumpy – and the worsted wool quilt was scratchier than horsehair, but it was warm, and Emma supposed, blearily, that was the important thing.

Beaming sunlight flooded through the smudged windows, and stung at her eyes as they fluttered open, squinting.

Bare floorboards. A plain washstand, with only a white porcelain basin. A blue and cream wallpaper, flowered stripes, a design Mama would like… oh. Oh, of course.

Ever so gradually, like the morning after Gloria Henderson’s debut and the buckets of champagne, the events of the past night began to trickle back.

“Good morning.” A familiar, warm voice murmured softly, and, with care to her aching muscles, she turned slowly to find a woman seated beside the bed, silhouetted by the bright window behind her.

“Mm… Nurse Mary…”

“Shh – just rest, and don’t move too much – you’ve had a very, very long night…”

Perhaps that was true, but her memories were vague at best – little more than flashes of pain, and some fear, Nurse Mary clutching at her hands, every word a thrum in her ear, and Henry…

“Where’s Henry…?” she mumbled, unconsciousness tempting her again, carried by bone-deep fatigue.

Suddenly the elder woman was all calm efficiency once more, ready and willing to impart care with an honest, responsible hand.

“Sleeping - it seems Dr. Foster all but emptied your husband’s veins to fill yours –“

Emma felt her breath come up short.

“- there’s no risk of danger, as long as he rests and is given plenty of lean meat and eggs, he should be safe. In the meantime, however…” she smiled, leaning forward, and for the first time Emma noticed the linen-swaddled shape in her arms, hardly bigger than a loaf of bread.

“I think it’s time you two were introduced.”

 

She’d wondered all her life how this moment might feel – idly as a child, cuddling china headed dolls, with greater seriousness as a young woman, when a fairy-tale marriage seemed thrillingly imminent – but there was no explaining what steadily grew and blossomed inside, until she felt it might overflow; and in some way, it did, several small tears trickling down to stain the pillow as the baby was laid on her chest.

Dark infant eyes blinked sleepily, gazing towards her face with something like curiosity, full pink lips puckering and smacking as he nuzzled against her collarbone, each breath evening out until, eventually, he drifted back to sleep.

For the second time in her life, Emma was in love.

“It nearly required a crowbar to pry him away from Matron Brannan.” Nurse Mary was mentioning with a quiet smile. “I would expect a good deal of unsolicited advice in the near future.”

Emma managed a weak giggle through tears, one finger tracing along each tiny feature as if trying to commit them to memory, as if she didn’t have all morning, all day, every coming year…

“… Does he look like his father?”

She glanced up in surprise, but the elder woman’s face held no shadow of judgment, only compassion.

Swallowing around the growing, choking flood of emotion, she ran her fingertip down a small pink cheek, noting the pointed chin and sharp nose thickened with baby softness.

With a quiet sob, Emma held her son close, and nodded.

“… He has Henry’s eyes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As is mentioned by Jed in s.2.e.1, James Blundell performed the first human to human blood transfusion somewhere between 1818 and 1829. What wasn't brought up was that the patient was a woman suffering from severe postpartum bleeding, her husband being used as the donor. Since this was long, LONG before the understanding of blood types, I'm conjecturing that husbands giving blood for their wives in this situation would have been the routine procedure.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it!!!! <3


End file.
